Germany: Roots & Remembrance

On Passover, we read that our forebears were wandering Arameans (Deuteronomy 26). Though interpretations vary, at its most basic level, it means that our people (starting with Abraham) wandered from Aram (northern Israel/Syria). (Click on any word in blue for link to article or other source)

My family is part of a people centered on a common origin, culture and history that today is called Judaism.

We are links in this long chain stretching back to Abraham. Freund family lore is that during the Spanish Inquisition, we left for Germany and settled there. We have proof that family lived in Germany in the late 1600’s. Beginning in the late 1800s, and especially during the 1930s, like Abraham most of our family left comfortable and familiar lives in their homeland (Aram for Abraham, Germany for us). They and their children scattered around the globe.

Three hundred years in one place makes for deep roots.

I undertook my genealogy adventure to understand and honor my ancestors, to get to know today’s Germans, and to work toward a better future.

I am lucky to have been born in the USA. America has been good to us—so far.

Alas, Jew-hatred has become a concern in America.

Every country has people who hate Jews. After WWII, Jews have been widely accepted in the United States. But lately, a disturbing number of leading American politicians—mostly from one party—have spread anti-Jewish lies, misleading ordinary Americans. Lies breed more lies: consider the Florida mother who has been posting hateful propaganda from the 1903 Czarist forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Maybe I was naive to think that such things are unAmerican.

Many of today’s Germans are focused on remembering and learning from the past. At memorials for my relatives, Nuremberg and Munich officials had tears in their eyes, genuine sorrow for the genocide their ancestors perpetrated.

The students to whom my father (via Zoom) and I spoke were attentive. One could hear a pin drop in the room. The teachers told me that most of the 200+ students were moved. Articles were written in each town about my visit and what it meant to the students.

Local residents in many towns work in the archives to put Jewish history online. The documents help create a picture of our families’ lives.

Yesterday in Nürnberg, the 100,000th European “Stumbling Stone” commemorating murdered Jews was laid. The stone for my Great-Aunt Karoline, the first stone of the day, was the 99,998th. As you saw yesterday, “Stumbling Stone” originator Gunter Demnig himself came for the installation.

A popular German TV station filmed our ceremony. In the piece as edited for broadcast is my singing in the background while my cousin Carol (who lives in The Netherlands) talks about her grandmother Karoline, for whom she is named. The short video will show you how a Stumbling Stone is installed. Here are links to my singing the video and the article.

My 17 days in Germany were emotionally and intellectually difficult. And I’m glad I went. The months I spent preparing, and the trip itself, helped me reconcile the toll Nazi Germany took on the Steinbergers and the Freunds, with the many modern Germans who preserve the memory of my family and my people in my ancestral homeland.

This morning I made my getaway.

I missed the sights, smells and sounds of home. Even the New York City subway. Especially the subway; it takes me from one end to the other of this vast city of as many as 800 languages for only $1.35. After weeks of German language immersion, what a pleasure to hear English—and everything else.

Thanks to all of you who joined me on this trip by reading my essays, writing to me, “liking” or commenting on a post. I couldn’t have written an illustrated essay each night without your engagement and encouragement.

Thanks to my German friends who helped me find my roots and who gave me the opportunity to speak with the students who are the world’s future. Thanks to my tutor, Daniela, who taught me to speak German well enough to engage with those students.

Take these lessons from what happened to my German family:

People should be allowed to be themselves. Tolerance of non-conformists isn’t enough. We must accept people for who they are.

Sometimes one person can make a difference, can save a life or alleviate someone’s pain.

Peter Schneider wrote in The New York Times in 2000, “In the end, it isn’t the justly admired, death-defying resistance fighters who decide whether a society will succumb to totalitarianism. The success of a dictatorship, like the success of the resistance to it, depends not on a few ‘great leaders’ but on the civic virtue of the average citizen.” I have come to know many Germans through my study of the German language and my work on Jewish history. In their quiet way, they display that vital civic virtue.

Step-by-step, they are making Germany better than they inherited it. We must do the same in the United States.

Now, it’s time to turn my attention to the present and to continue to build on the chain that has linked us back to Abraham of Aram—and to Abraham Lincoln.

To read prior essays, click HERE.